Meridian

Meridian is a business management application for running a consulting practice. It handles the full lifecycle — contacts, opportunities, invoices, expenses, tasks, and reporting — in a single integrated tool.

Why it exists

Meridian started as a way to solve a specific problem: why isn’t there a simple system for solopreneurs that combines CRM and accounting functionality without major recurring fees, constant upsells, and unneeded functionality?

How it was built

Like the Pipeline tool, Meridian was built with Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding tool. But the development process was different. Where the Pipeline tool started from scratch, Meridian was a migration — the existing Flask app provided a known data model, defined endpoints, and clear feature requirements. That structure made the AI-assisted approach especially effective: I could describe each piece of the old system and have Claude Code rebuild it on the new stack, then verify the output against what already existed.

The workflow was iterative. Each session, I’d pick a feature area — say, invoice generation or expense tracking — describe how it worked in the Flask version, and Claude Code would implement it in Next.js. A CLAUDE.md file in the repository captured architecture decisions, conventions, and context, so each new session could pick up coherently where the last one left off.

The stack is Next.js 16 with React 19, Supabase for the database and authentication, Tailwind CSS 4 for styling, and Backblaze B2 for file storage (receipt images and attachments). Deployed on Vercel.

What it does

• Contact management — Tracks people and organizations, with relationship history and linked records across the system.
• Sales pipeline — Manages opportunities from initial conversation through close, with stage tracking and probability.
• Invoicing with PDF generation — Creates and sends invoices, generates PDFs, and tracks payment status.
• Expense tracking with receipt uploads — Logs expenses with category tagging and receipt image uploads stored in Backblaze B2.
• Task management — A Kanban-style task system with due dates, priorities, and a weekly view that shows what needs attention now.
• Reporting and analytics — Dashboards covering revenue, pipeline health, expense trends, and other key metrics.
• Global search — A search interface that finds records across all entity types — contacts, invoices, tasks, and more.
• Keyboard shortcuts — Power-user navigation for moving quickly between sections without reaching for the mouse.